Since 2009, each issue of the Bards and Sages Quarterly has delivered a unique variety of character-driven speculative fiction short stories from both new and established writers. Our writers include first-time authors, Pushcart Prize nominees and Nebula award winners.

Kasey and the gang were held together by a set of rules, their Zombie Plan. It kept them alive through the beginning of the End. But when the chaos faded, they became careless, and Murphy’s Law decided to pay a long-overdue visit. Now the group is broken and scattered with no refuge in sight. Those remaining must make their way across West Virginia in search of those who were stolen from them.

Take the wrong path and you may never come back...
Andrew couldn't be happier to take his family on a camping trip, some time away together was long overdue but when the family gets lost and takes a wrong turn they end up in what seems to be a ghost town.
They soon learn they are not alone in the run-down town and that something just doesn't feel right.

Ask yourself this: If the dead rise tomorrow, are you ready? Do you have a plan? Kasey, a strong-willed loner, has something she calls The Zombie Plan. But every plan has its weaknesses, and a freight train of tragedy is bearing down on Kasey and her friends. In the darkness that follows, Kasey’s Plan slowly unravels: friends lost, family taken, their stronghold reduced to ashes.

Poor Roberta. She's aging, has lost everyone she's ever loved, and now she lives out her sad, lonely days gorging on bad convenience store food and faded memories of happier times. She wants nothing more than to join her loved ones in the afterlife, but then a gruesome discovery along the banks of the Merrimack River changes everything. Roberta begins to hope that she'll never be alone again.

Cabal is the story of Boone, a tortured soul haunted by the conviction that he has committed atrocious crimes. In a necropolis in the wilds of Canada, he seeks refuge and finds the last great creatures of the world - the shape-shifters known as the Nightbreed. They are possessed of unearthly powers-and so is Boone. In the hunt for Boone, they too will be hunted.

Jack Walker continues the search for others. The night runners are gathering and adapting. The survivors must stay one step ahead. Their very existence depends on it.
Jack is unaware of the danger in the heart of the sanctuary - an act of kindness that may bring about the destruction of everything.
While both sides fight for their very existence, an infatuation arises that could destroy them both.

Imagine worlds that are twisted fragments of our own ... A vision in the mirror is anything but heavenly. The zombie apocalypse triggers one survivor's unhealthy obsession. And where do you run when the world begins to physically unravel? Shards is fiction at its shortest and sharpest, a collection of disturbing stories from a master of dark flash fiction.

When Nora and her team arrive at the island, she expects a routine zoological excursion...but they’re not alone. Are her lurid sexual dreams making her paranoid...or is she being watched? The dead bodies they find are bad enough, but then her team members begin to disappear, and when they return, they’ve...changed. Indeed, there are other people on the island...along with something else far worse.

They have survived an extinction level event and the meltdown.
Now the remnants of the human race face their toughest enemy: Each other.
Sealed under mountains of rock, the emerging civilization is beginning to fracture. Can the cracks be patched or will mankind's last refuge become its tomb.
Redaction: Will this be mankind's last chapter in the Book of Life?

A collection of twenty short stories of subtle horror.
Stories included in this collection:
Change of Mind
The Pact
Soon
Susan’s Home
Maintenance Man
Love Till the End of Time
Dear Hunter
Hurry Up Please, It’s Time
Dirty Old
Age of Consent
Table Manners
Three
Let Me Count the Ways
Devil in Disguise
Such a Simple Thing
Chills
Snakegod
For Love or Money
The Farm
The Last Ding Dong of Doom

Shades Of Gray Series follows the adventures of Kat, a woman with no memory of her past who is called the Pandora Project by those who hunt her, and Kim, a woman leading the life of a legal assassin called a Life Closer. The world they live in is plagued by clouds that prevent the sun from shining down on the land called Dry Clouds, making all who live in Noir forced to live in endless night...

Some people in Maywell, New Jersey, commute to New York. Some are working on a lab project that will change the world — if it is allowed to succeed.
And some people are witches.
Amanda Walker is not a witch — yet. She's an artist, looking for work — unaware that someone has a desperate need for her, a dark plan that may require Amanda to enter death itself.
If she is allowed to live long enough.

In the harsh winter of a post-apocalyptic landscape, Rachel Wheeler and her companions hole up in an Appalachian compound established by her notorious grandfather. A rogue military platoon plans to seize the compound and control the small band of survivors. At the same time, violent mutants organize into a tribe that threatens to wipe out the human race.

"Michael Potts brings a refreshing voice to the world of contemporary poetry; hope, sorrow, joy, grief, and fear reside within his colllection, Hiding From the Reaper and Other Horror Poems. It was a true pleasure to read. Michael Potts is a poet to watch."
-Michael Randolph, author of the bestselling poetry collection, Missives in Red and owner of Eldritch Press.

When scientific research into curing both hunger and obesity goes terribly wrong, a fast moving plague is unleashed and sweeps across New Jersey. A soldier, a scientist, a detective, a mobster, a politician and a prepper, along with a beautiful yet dangerous woman from the Philippines, must journey through chaos towards their only chance of escape on the Garden State Parkway - Exit Zero.

In 1890s New Orleans, three unusual men cross paths: Reynard LaCroix, his lycanthropy in remission with a silver bullet lodged against his heart; Artémius Savoy, a lapsed secular priest keeping vigil over Reynard's progress; and Mahonri Grant, a Mormon gunslinger on the run.
Brought together by murder, united in a common cause, they pursue an unholy creature to save a young woman's life.